Bedsider

Well. According to Google Trends (see the handy screen capture above), the word “slut” appeared in the news more this month than at any time in the history of the world (since 2004, anyway). This was thanks, presumably, to some ridiculous comments from a certain right-wing radio personality. The gist of the comments, for any who by some stroke of fairy magic managed not to hear/read them, was basically that any woman who has trouble affording birth control—or, debatably, any woman who even uses birth control—is a slut. Whichever way you interpret the comments, they refer to A LOT of women.

So it makes sense that one particularly notable theme to come out of the controversy has been a rallying cry for birth-control-loving folks far and wide to band together over their right (and the right of their loved ones) to access birth control—even if that makes them “sluts” by the (bizarro) standards of some. Sure, “slut” can mean different things to different people (especially on Twitter, as we’ve noted in the past), but regardless of how you feel about the word, we hope you’ll agree that the following three ways it’s been used lately are—for lack of a better word—awesome.

1) Sir Richard’s Condom Company started a “Sluts Unite” campaign, complete with its very own oath (!). The oath is worth reading in its entirety, in our humble opinion:

THE SLUTS UNITE OATH

I believe that sex represents more than just the creation of children.

I believe it is an enjoyable, healthy and a profound part of the human experience.

I also believe that the responsible use of birth control is an essential component of a mature, civilized society.

And if these beliefs make me a slut in some people’s eyes, then so be it.

I will stand united with my fellow sluts, now and always.

If the oath inspires you to show your “slut pride,” you can do so with downloadable slut-positive slogans like this one, courtesy of the Sluts Unite website.

2) Musical comedy duo Reformed Whores made a response video to the controversial comments, in which they proclaimed themselves sluts for using birth control—even though one was using it within her marriage and the other was using it for health benefits.

3) And last, but definitely not least, Not So Secret made the word into an acronym for healthy sex. If “slut” sex—that is sex involving safety, love, understanding, and trust—is wrong, we don’t want to be right.   

This week in “Sex on TV,” I’ve decided to cut back on the prose and flex the ol’ Illustrator muscles instead. Think of it as a little breather, like when you’d be reading chapter books and there would be those 4-6 glossy pages of pictures right in the middle, illustrating what’s been happening in the first half of the book and letting you know that you’re exactly halfway through. So, you’re all welcome for the reprieve.

In deciding which small screen show to focus on for this project, I chatted with a coworker about Grey’s Anatomy, which we’re both unembarrassed to admit we still watch (though I’ll admit I treat it like an elderly distant relative who I figure doesn’t have much time left, anyway). Nonetheless, our loyalty to the weekly drama led us to draft a relationship diagram, allowing us to visualize just how much overlap and interconnectivity there is on that show in terms of sex. It’s by far one of the grossest visuals I’ve ever seen, which is impressive, given that it consists of nothing more controversial or lewd than names and lines.

But so rarely has the show acknowledged the incest-y tendencies of the couplings. I’ve never been one to judge a person—on-screen or in real life—based on the number of sexual partners they’ve had. But I can’t help but think back to that day in health class when the teacher told us that having sex with one person also means you’re having sex with anyone else they’ve slept with. Initially confused at the notion of pluralistic relationships, it began to make sense when my teacher explained how STIs are transmitted. The folks on Grey’s Anatomy, however, seem to completely ignore their sex-ed experience. True, during the first season, both George and Alex sleep with Olivia, unaware of the other, and they all end up with syphilis. Though I assume everyone self-medicated with the necessary antibiotics (they are in a hospital, after all), never again did anything bacterial or viral go…well, viral. Which should be pretty surprising, considering how convoluted the chart turned out:

*Please note, I’m new to the entire Adobe Design Creative Suite and this seemingly simple chart actually took me roughly 3 months to make.

Check out Alex and George in the middle of it all. Looks like Seattle Grace should collectively take a moment to give thanks for penicillin.

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Lauren Mann works in The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy’s Entertainment Media department. She’s been blogging about sex, love and relationships among twenty-somethings since she first joined the Campaign as an intern in 2009. Check out her personal blog at whatjewtalkingbout.tumblr.com.

As a response to a Congressional hearing on whether health insurance plans should be required to cover birth control—a hearing which is now infamous for opening with the testimonies of five men and zero women—the Coalition to Protect Women’s Health Care (CPWH) started the “I Have a Say” campaign to bring women’s voices into the discussion. Today Sarah Brown, CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, added her own voice to the campaign.

And the great thing about it is that you don’t have to have 45 years of experience in the area of birth control and pregnancy planning to have a say. CPWH is asking all women to share their experiences and perspectives on why access to contraception is important.

Check out a few more examples below or go to the CPWH playlist to see more “I Have a Say” videos. Then make your own and share it with CPWH. You can also join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #ihaveasay. (And if you’re moved to give us a heads up when you’ve had your say, we’re making a playlist too and would love for you to be a part of it!) 

Dianna in Alaska:

Megan, a nurse from Tacoma, WA:

Did you know condoms prevent pregnancy, protect you from STIs, and make awesome clothes? Wait, what? You didn’t see that one coming did you?

Last week I was lucky enough to attend University of South Carolina’s Project Condom Season 5. Project Condom inspires students to make clothes out of condoms to raise awareness about pregnancy prevention, getting tested, and generally being awesome. Each designer shows off their creation in a full-on fashion show. This year’s event even had a celebrity judge, Mondo Guerra from Project Runway. You see what they did there?

Alpha Phi Omega’s Michael Jackson tribute to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS prevention took home first place.

But my personal favorite was Love Story’s condom fairy. I mean, it was a fairy costume made of condoms. It’s like a dream come true.

Check out The Daily Gamecock for more pictures and maybe some less biased coverage of the event.

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Stefanie is the Manager of Youth Initiatives at The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. When she is not on college campuses talking about birth control and Bedsider, she is hanging out with some pretty awesome teens. She is from the great state of California and is a little awkward, both of which she will tell you in the first 30 seconds of a conversation. You can also follow her shenanigans on her personal tumblr, Nutz and Boltz.

Wow. We probably don’t need to tell you that birth control has been in the news a lot lately. And though unfortunately we can’t say the attention has been all positive, we’ve actually seen a whole lot of good publicity coming out of the discussion overall. The latest theme we’ve noticed is media attention to birth control and the economy—and let’s just say birth control comes out looking pretty fantastic (no make-up required). A few favorite points in birth control’s favor:

Women benefit. The New York Times published a piece yesterday (which The Washington Post riffed off of) on how the pill has affected women’s ability to contribute to the economy. A teaser:

A study by Martha J. Bailey, Brad Hershbein and Amalia R. Miller helps assign a dollar value to those tectonic shifts. For instance, they show that young women who won access to the pill in the 1960s ended up earning an 8 percent premium on their hourly wages by age 50.

Such trends have helped narrow the earnings gap between men and women. Indeed, the paper suggests that the pill accounted for 30 percent – 30 percent! – of the convergence of men’s and women’s earnings from 1990 to 2000.

Taxpayers benefit.On Sunday, The Times published a piece on “Pregnancy Prevention and the Taxpayer.” The article highlighted a recent study that found that there are a few things the government can pay for that will save taxpayers many, many dollars over the long haul. According to the study, “[t]he biggest savings would come from increasing the amount of subsidized birth control available to poor women. At a cost of $235 million a year, such programs could save $1.32 billion annually.” Sounds like a good deal to us…

Consumers benefit (from more information about their birth control options). Okay, maybe that heading’s a stretch, but we wanted to include an article from U.S. News Money on “The Real Cost of Birth Control,” which sought to be “a guide for people who want to consider the health of their bank account when making their birth control decision.” We love that they wanted to make the cost of different methods easier to understand, though it doesn’t look like they fully accounted for health insurance coverage (or health reform, which will eliminate co-pays on birth control, or other programs to make birth control cheaper or even free…) They also seem to have used slightly outdated effectiveness numbers for the different methods.

Must also note that their conclusion that the diaphragm is the most cost-effective method rings a bit hollow considering that with normal use of it, 12 in 100 women will get pregnant within a year of relying on it—U.S. News quotes that proportion as 15 in 100, which would be even more of a reason not to recommend it for folks who are watching their finances. As the article itself notes, an accidental pregnancy can be harder on a bank account than any method on the market. No offense to the diaphragm intended, but considering that the IUD, for example, is often quite affordable with insurance and also incredibly effective (same story for the implant, which didn’t even get a mention, as well as sterilization), we definitely would’ve picked a different winner.

Insurance providers and their customers benefit. And last but not least, way back in February, TIME published an excellent explanation of “Why Free Birth Control Will Not Hike the Cost of Your Insurance,” complete with illustrative anecdotes:

Think of it this way: If my married daughter lays out a $15 co-pay for birth control pills, she doesn’t save a dime. True, she protects herself against the emotional cost of an unwanted pregnancy, along with the hefty costs of raising a child. But in terms of the costs to give birth to the child, she is not much better off, because if she does become pregnant, her insurer, like many, would pay the bills above and beyond the co-pay.

By contrast, if an insurer makes birth control totally free for all of its customers, it avoids having to reimburse them for countless unplanned pregnancies and births. Overall, then, it’s cheaper for the insurer to pay a little upfront to save a ton down the line.

This isn’t the first time we’ve posted about Beforeplay.org and it probably won’t be the last. We’re so psyched to be working with them and to see them getting some much-deserved media attention. Though their excellent, locally tailored campaign is all their own, you may have noticed traces of Bedsider on the website itself.

Martha Kempner noted in her RH Reality Check piece about the Colorado-based campaign that there “are now countless websites devoted to sharing information about contraception, STDs, and sexual health…each has a slightly different audience but I do question whether we could do even better if we just pooled our resources to make existing sites better rather than continue to put up new ones.” It’s nice to be able to say that in this case, Bedsider and the BeforePlay folks did just that. BeforePlay uses Bedsider’s health center and emergency contraception (EC) finder databases and their team helped us to improve the information the databases offer on Colorado health centers and EC. BeforePlay also used some of our information and images (the method detail pages and “Real Stories” will look particularly familiar to Bedsider users) in their birth control section.

We’ve put a lot into our site with the goal of being a resource to individuals as well as health care providers and other partners, but we can’t be all things to all audiences, so we love that the BeforePlay team took what they found useful from Bedsider and tailored it to Coloradans. We hope to work with other state and local partners in similar ways going forward. There are plenty of ways to use our resources already by embedding videos from our YouTube channel or using our free birth control finder on your own website. We also invite you to reach out via info[at]bedsider[dot]org if you know of a state or local initiative you think we should work with.

And now, another BeforePlay video we love for your viewing pleasure:

With a title I thought I’d only ever write satirically, American media is abuzz with a rumor substantiated by a “reliable source” that Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi is pregnant. Though she went on record just a few weeks ago denying that she has a bun in the oven (or that she knows what an oven is, probably), word on the street is that she had been shopping around her big news to several tabloids to see who would provide her the most cash for her big reveal. It probably helps that a Jersey Shore spinoff with fellow cast mate Jenni “J-WOWW” Farley has begun shooting and will likely benefit from some scandalous publicity.

I could waste your time with pages of passionate prose detailing why Snooki is not ready for a baby (and should probably refrain from procreating in the future, as well) but that would be as productive as copying phone book entries into Excel (a task that I can attest from personal experience is beyond counterproductive). If you know who Snooki is, you know she shouldn’t be having children. Not yet, at least, but—let’s be honest—probably not ever.

So how about some video evidence? Exhibit A: Snooki crashes her car into an Italian police officer in Florence. Not enough? Exhibit B: Snooki flashes an entire club while “dancing.” And most recently? Just a few weeks ago, Snooki literally urinated in the middle of the dance floor. I don’t even want to imagine what her bladder control will be like if she really is pregnant.

Snooki and I are the same age. I know I’m not ready for a baby and I have a pristine driving record, keep my privates private, and, I’m proud to say, am house broken. With her hard partying ways, inappropriate behavior and complete lack of common sense, Snooki is the epitome of fantastic reality television. Ready for motherhood, though? Absolutely not.

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Lauren Mann works in The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy’s Entertainment Media department. She’s been blogging about sex, love and relationships among twenty-somethings since she first joined the Campaign as an intern in 2009. Check out her personal blog at whatjewtalkingbout.tumblr.com.

A note from Lauren: Please excuse my absence this week, but trust in the fact that I’ve left the “Sex on TV” duties to a guest blogger who will not let you down. Plus, like I learned from television, the younger and cuter girl is always more desirable. So I present to you the musings of our intern, Roxanne, who still has the positive and ambitious attitude of a college student. The cynicism will come soon and fast, my dear.

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Although I graduated from college this past December, I won’t feel like it’s official until I walk the stage and receive my “diploma” (we all know they just hand you a blank piece of paper). As graduation day approaches, I notice myself getting anxious about my future and I think rightfully so. I have absolutely no idea where I am going to be or what I will be doing in June. Every time I think about my future I feel my stomach churning.

Recently during an episode of Glee, Finn struggled with decisions about his future. He is lost, just as most high school seniors are, but the difference between him and most other students is that he decides love is his number one priority. So he proposes to his girlfriend, Rachel. And for Rachel, growing increasingly nervous about her own future as she watches her friends get accepted to college and make plans while she’s still in limbo, she decides to accept Finn’s proposal. Is this really the way to get control over your life?

It seems like we’ve moved away from the cliché “after prom sex episode” (since now most programs are showing characters having sex throughout high school, not waiting for prom night) and instead towards the life-changing marriage proposal. My first memory of this prolific moment comes from Boy Meets World. Does anyone else remember watching Topanga propose to Corey while the rest of their classmates throw their caps in the air to celebrate their high school graduation? We all know how it ends… they decide not to get married right away and end up getting married during college (I know… so much more realistic).

We then move onto one of my favorite shows, Gilmore Girls. As Rory is about to graduate from Yale, Logan (her boyfriend of a couple of years) decides to pop the question. After some deliberation, Rory says no to Logan because, let’s be honest, there is a lot she wants to do before tying the knot. And really, who can blame her?

Even in comedies like That ’70s Show, the teenagers turn to proposals. When Eric is worried about his future with Donna at the end of high school he jumps to proposing. Even though his friends tell him it’s a bad idea, he does it anyway. And guess what… the wedding doesn’t happen.  Obviously TV has to make things over the top and dramatic, but does it always have to be this all or nothing nonsense?

Now, before you say I don’t know what I am talking about because I have never been in a serious relationship and when you are in love age doesn’t make a difference, you should all know I have been with same person for almost 5 years. I can also tell you that as I try to figure out my life after graduation, I am not considering marriage. I am 22-years-old and not ready to get married, but that doesn’t mean I want to break-up with my boyfriend or that he isn’t a factor in my decisions. Obviously I can’t speak for him entirely (hope things don’t get awkward when he reads this), but I’m pretty sure we are on the same page.

So what’s wrong with me? According to TV, I should be picking out china patterns and planning my first kid by now. Apparently once a couple has had sex, the next step is marriage. Look at Finn and Rachel—they had sex earlier this season and now we have a proposal. But before they walk down the aisle, they should probably keep in mind that teen marriages are twice as likely to fail as marriages in which the woman is at least 25-years-old.

I’m not saying that teenagers and young adults should give up on love, but it’s important to remember that a relationship, or sex for that matter, doesn’t define you. Who knows if the Finn/Rachel wedding will actually happen, but it’s wrong that just because the two feel lost they made such a drastic decision. An engagement at 18 doesn’t make life less scary or complicated. You need to know who you are before making that type of commitment.

“Engagement ring” image by Tela Chhe.

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Lauren Mann works in The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy’s Entertainment Media department. She’s been blogging about sex, love and relationships among twenty-somethings since she first joined the Campaign as an intern in 2009. Check out her personal blog at whatjewtalkingbout.tumblr.com.

Originally published on SexReally.com on July 5, 2011.

Last summer I grew balls. I’m not saying this in an I-got-spunky-and-feisty kind of way. I mean I grew two sacks filled with fluid between my vagina and anus due to a shaving accident.

Here’s how it happened: I was in the shower shaving with a new razor and, unbeknownst to me at the time, shaved in a way that caused two ingrown hairs. These hairs got so infected that, over a period of a couple of days, one was the size of a quarter and the other the size of a nickel.

I didn’t notice them until I started having a burning sensation when I walked. I sat down on the floor with a mirror and looked at my vaginal region, where I saw two big lumps. My immediate reaction was one of absolute panic. Did I get some kind of STI and didn’t know it?

I immediately called a girlfriend of mine who worked at a nonprofit that educates teens about STIs and AIDS. I described the lumps to her in complete detail. My amazing friend asked lots of questions and didn’t get grossed out or judgmental during our conversation.

“Girl, you have ingrown hairs,” she concluded.

“What?” I had been shaving since I was a tween and had never had an ingrown hair before. After all that experience, how could I possibly have done such a bad job shaving?

I’m ashamed to admit that it took another day to actually call a doctor. I was embarrassed by what I saw and kept hoping it would go away on its own, but by the following day I was in so much pain that my sense of modesty went, along with my refusal to face reality, completely out the window. A call to my doctor was in order.

I relayed my story to a receptionist, who in turn told the story to my doctor. Within an hour I had an appointment with a dermatologic surgeon. Two hours after that I was sitting in stirrups preparing for emergency surgery. A nurse put shots of numbing medicine into the lumps themselves so that the surgeon could go in and lacerate them. I was lying on my back screaming curse words into the air as the nurse shot the numbing medicine into my “balls.” In the middle of all that cursing it hit me: I was getting my balls cut off.

It took about fifteen minutes, and I’m so glad that my vantage point didn’t allow me to see what was going on. I did lift up my body at one point to look, but my doctor scolded me, saying, “What are you doing looking? There’s nothing to see here.” After a two-second glimpse into the action, which featured my doctor and a nurse with tons of gauze covered in puss and blood, I was happy to stare at the ceiling for the rest of the procedure.

When it was over, my doctor sent me home with a prescription for antibiotics and instructions on how to place gauze over the area. The bandages had to be changed every time I went to the bathroom and let’s just say I didn’t fully realize the amount of water I consume until this experience.

Hair removal in the bikini area is the subject matter of the documentary Why We Wax by Kimberley Wetherell, Amy Axelson, and Suzanne Pancrazi. Jane Pratt, who interviewed Wetherell and Axelson about their movie and waxing techniques, also wrote about a waxing experience as part of her new online magazine XOJane.com. The idea is this: waxing and shaving the pubic region is nothing new. Women talk about it, men know about it, and both sometimes have strong opinions of whether/how it should be done. The question I had to ask after my experience, which the documentary couldn’t answer for me, was: Why was I putting myself through this? Did I shave for a partner? For myself? Because of broader expectations?

The answer wasn’t black and white. Up until that point I really enjoyed having very little hair around my vagina. I found it to be pleasant visually, and it was an added bonus if a partner enjoyed it as well.

But this is more than just a crazy story about pubic hair. It was a turning point in my life. The first few days following my procedure were quite difficult. It was hard to walk, and I live in an urban area where few people have cars. I couldn’t walk to the pharmacy right up the street to get my prescription filled. So, I took a friend up on her mantra of, “Call me whenever you need anything.” Making that call was hard. The independent side of me had to admit I couldn’t do something, and I needed help in a very specific way. My friend had a car and ever so graciously picked me up, took me to the pharmacy, and made sure I had everything I needed to heal.

It was also a turning point when it came to my romantic relationships. Here I had a problem that involved my sexual health, yet when I called my boyfriend at the time and relayed what had happened his reaction was, “Oh, that sucks.” He didn’t come see me. He didn’t help. There was a part of me that definitely felt, “Hey, buddy, you are in this thing with me.” But he wasn’t.

The same day my boyfriend proved not to care, my best guy friend showed up at my house with food and some DVDs. He was worried and wanted to make sure I was okay. I was on pain medication that made me fuzzy, and I don’t remember many details from his visit. But the next day I remembered one thing quite clearly: I was done with selfish guys.

It was such a simple, but completely altering, way of looking at my relationships. If a guy couldn’t bother to help me when I needed him–and I rarely admit when I need someone–he certainly wasn’t going to be there for me in the long haul. I didn’t want to be with that personality type anymore. I was done.

It’s been one year since my balls surgery, and I haven’t shaved my bikini area since because I keep having scalpel flashbacks. One day I will. Enough time has passed for me to understand that choosing to shave is independent of having or not having a partner. It is an action that I do for myself.

The most important lesson from this whole incident really didn’t have anything to do with learning more about shaving (though I did find some recommended best practices if you’re interested). The most important lesson from the incident had to do with relationships. Remember the selfish guy? I dropped him as soon as I got off of my pain meds and could think clearly enough to say “screw you.” The biggest surprise of all? The best guy friend who brought me food and DVDsquo;s–I wised up and realized that he was the person that I should have been with the whole time. I’m very happy and he loves me just the way I am. And every now and then we get a good chuckle about how I used to have balls.

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This post was written by Girl Friday, a PYT shrouded in a cloud of mystery. She doesn’t want us to know her real name.

You may have noticed we’re observing National Condom Week—and our friends at Sir Richard’s Condom Company are making it international. This spring, the company will donate 500,000 condoms to Partners in Health (PIH) clinics in Haiti. So sweet, right? And you can get in on the action. For every person who shares their love for condoms in a Facebook post or Tweet this week, Sir Richard’s will add another condom to the donation. How ‘bout that? Saving lives with social media…we can dig it.

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Khalea Underwood is an intern for the digital media team of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. When she’s not writing, shopping, or listening to music, the Howard University print journalism student moonlights as an older sister, a contributor for MTVIggy.com, and a copy editor for The Hilltop newspaper.

As if national condom week weren’t exciting enough in its own right, some of our favorite folks ever—the ones over at Get Yourself Tested (GYT)—are running a sweepstakes this week giving away Beats by Dr. Dre headphones and a trip to NYC for two. To enter, all you have to do is tweet your answer to @MTVact’s question of the day. All the questions—and yes, that means just two more for the week, unless you’re really fast tonight—can be answered by checking out the GYT party interactive video. So basically it’s a win-win (or a win-win-win?) proposition—you get to watch an interactive video, learn about STIs, and possibly win prizes. (You know, besides the prize of being better informed about STIs…)

And while we’re on the subject of condoms and STI prevention, we just happen to have a new Fact or Fiction video for your myth-busting viewing pleasure.The question at hand: Can you get STIs from oral sex?

PS—Have you checked out Lucky Bloke yet? While you’ve got STI prevention on the brain, you may want to see whether their monthly condom subscription service—which also offers female condoms, dental dams, and lube for good measure—could be of interest…

If any of you are like me, you’ve jumped on the Downton Abbey train. And I mean train in the steam locomotion sense, as commercial air travel wouldn’t enter the picture for another decade or so. But you know what I mean. Never did I think I’d see the day when I’d gleefully hop onto my couch with a glass of wine in hand to tune into my favorite program of the week on – wait for it—PBS. At least not until I was 80 or so. But there I am on Sunday nights (or on PBS’s website for mid-week catch up sessions), watching the tail end of Grannies on Safari or This Old House as I wait for Laura Linney to beckon me to early 20th century England.

So we’re there, biting our nails when poor Cousin Matthew is missing in war, rolling our eyes when naïve Sybil rebukes the adorable Branson’s declaration of love…again, and cackling with delight when crotchety Grandma Violet (a.k.a. Minerva McGonagall 4 Life) sends a zinger right into gullible Cousin Isobel’s girdle.

Sure, there’s a war and drama among the house staff and an impossibly cute dog, but the bulk of the storyline boils down to the ‘will they, won’t they’ love between Lady Mary and Cousin Matthew. And for a television show about love, there sure isn’t a ton of lovin’ going on. Aside from the insinuated, though never seen, heart stopping (literally) consummation of Mary and the now-deceased Turk in the first season and a single scene of maid-on-invalid debauchery during the second season, there’s practically zero bed-shaking at Downton Abbey. At least on screen. So why do I still feel the need to describe it as a sexy show?

Folks, Downton Abbey has perfected what is known as the longing glance. A piercing stare characterized by hankering, intensity, probable ujjayi breathing, robust with notes of yearning, aching, and just a touch of cardamom. And boy does Mary give good glance. She could probably get pregnant solely by the lusting in her stares at Cousin Matthew. As for Matthew, although his loins aren’t burning for anyone or anything post-war spinal injury, I’m not giving up hope for a Crawley-Crawley heir. Sybil’s too fickle and while I think it’s obvious that Ethel would miraculously heal from that nasty case of prickly bitch she’s been sporting if she just got laid, I’m not holding out for her to carry on the family genes.

In a nutshell, it sounds ludicrous to say that I get my jollies from an hour-long drama on PBS where STIs are less of a concern than the Spanish Flu, longing glances outnumber steamy sex scenes 100 to 0, and the female characters show less skin than a Barbara Walter’s 20/20. But I do. It just goes to show that television can be well-written, entertaining, and sexy without any vulgarity. So, you hear that, Barbara? Stop skanking it up.

“Downton-Abbey-Episode-7” image by Evian Tsai.

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Lauren Mann works in The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy’s Entertainment Media department. She’s been blogging about sex, love and relationships among twenty-somethings since she first joined the Campaign as an intern in 2009. Check out her personal blog at whatjewtalkingbout.tumblr.com.